Boats & Gear

This, my friends, is a small boat with a very large reputation. The reason I'm blogging about her right now is that she happens to be for sale. Unfortunately, I'm getting a bit long in the tooth, but for a certain sort of sailor--you must be young, footloose, and maybe just a little bit crazy--this represents the opportunity of a lifetime.

I first met Plumbelly many years ago while passing through Bermuda, and the sight of her lying against the wall at Ordinance Island stopped me dead in my tracks. This is not an unusual reaction. I don't know if mere photography can convey just how charismatic this little vessel is, but if ever you see her in the flesh--and flesh is indeed the word for it, as there is nothing plastic about her--you will at once be lost in mad fantasies of micro-gaffer ocean voyaging.

Gather round boys and girls and have a gander at what Santa did not bring me for Christmas this year. One big reason for this is that this boat does not yet exist. Indeed, it may never exist. The yacht Ankida, near as I can tell, is merely a concept, a fanciful g
leam in the eye of a designer named Alexander Isaac, who works with Lila-Lou, a design "studio" based in both London and Switzerland. Mr. Isaac has not deigned to return my telephone calls, so I can offer no intelligence on whether this thing actually has a snowball in hell's chance of ever getting built, but I can say this:

Wowza!!! This is an entirely different approach to rigging a sailboat.

Wanna-be Viking voyagers daunted at the prospect of having to plunder and pillage in open boats can now heave a huge sigh of relief. At last someone has had the vision to both design and build a modern-day Norse longship with comfortable i
nterior accommodations and contemporary amenities. The visionary in question is Sigurjon Jonsson of the Skipavik shipyard in Stykkisholmur, Iceland, which has been building fishing boats ever since 1928. This beautiful and extremely unusual Langskip 55, the first yacht ever built at Skipavik, was conceived by Sigurjon as a versatile world-class cruising boat that can both cross oceans and wander up shallow rivers and inland waterways with impunity. Cruisers with a sense of history please note: these are the very same attributes that allowed Norse sailors to make such a nuisance of themselves during the Middle Ages.

It seems whenever I visit Bermuda I almost always run into people I know. One big surprise I had while passing thru last month was bumping into Brad Sellew, who sold me Crazy Horse (ex-Wanderlust), the Pearson Alberg 35 yawl I sailed to West Africa aboard back in the mid-1990s. Here you see her anchored out in the Cape Verdes, where I stopped en route to the W'Indies in February 1997. Designed by the Swedish emigrant Carl Alberg, who also conceived such iconic fiberglass production boats as the Pearson Triton and almost all of Cape Dory’s product line (including the Cape Dory 36, 40, and 45, which are still built today by Robinhood Marine), the Alberg 35 is a prime example of a CCA-era cruiser-racer that is still a very viable low-budget coastal and bluewater cruising boat. Over 250 were built over a six-year period starting in 1961, and the majority are still in service.

In its own way this may have been the most important in-the-water exhibit at this year's Annapolis show. No salesmen, ho hype---just a team of riggers changing out the standing rig on a 30-year-old Westsail 32. What was significant was the material they were using. No wire, no toggles, no turnbuckles. Instead all the new standing rigging was Dynex Dux braided fiber rope (from Colligo Marine) secured in place with old-fashioned deadeyes and lanyards. Just how ironic is that??? Let us count the ways.

There are worse fates to be endured in this workaday life than getting to sail a new J/Boat with Al Johnstone on a gorgeous fall day on Narragansett Bay. Conditions were just about perfect: bright sunshine with a brisk southwesterly blowing 15-18 knots and looking to get brisker. Al, who designed our ride, the new J/97, told me beforehand what he was shooting for was an entry-level sprit boat that would be a tad less intense and intimidating than the very popular J/105, but would still be fast and fun to sail. At the conclusion of our little outing I had to admit he has hit this nail on the head.

This is another neat new item that caught my attention at the Newport show back in September. At first I laughed out loud when I saw it, as it seemed so over the top. A carbon-fiber RIB dinghy with a teak deck! Talk about overkill. But then I inspected the craft in detail and fell in love with it. This iteration, the Pure 450 Open T, which is about 15 feet long, has a super-clean look and ultimately its aesthetic, I think, is very elegant and understated.

Construction, for a tender, is robust and extremely high tech. The hull body is carbon fiber reinforced with layers of Kevlar underneath (for increased impact resistance) vacuum-bagged over a CoreCell foam core. The structure is then post-cured in an oven to assure maximum laminate integrity. The inflatable sponsons are made of Valmex, a commercial-grade workboat fabric that is as long-lived as Hypalon (figure 10 years plus on lifespan) but can be heat-welded, which allows for superior seam construction and maximizes air retention over time.

Speaking of Volvo Open 70s, another thing I got to see at the Newport show was the inside of one.

I went down to Boston in May when the whole Volvo Ocean Race fleet was in town, and even though I had press credentials... even though I was crewing on a race marshal's boat, setting buoys and chasing riff-raff off the in-harbor race course (hats off to Scott Alexander at Selden Mast on that one)... no one would let me have even a teensy-tiny peek down below into the innards of any of the competing vessels. Interior accoutrements were strictly verboten, hush-hush, access only on a need-to-know basis.

I encountered this little weapon of a boat, the K650, at the Newport show, hunkered down on a trailer. A sport boat I guess i s
what you'd call it, though what it looks like is a miniaturized Volvo Open 70. Which makes sense, since its designer, Juan Kouyoumdjian (a.k.a. Johnny Unpronounceable), has a portfolio filled with top Volvo boats, America's Cup boats, you name it. Brendan Kavanaugh, North American rep for the builder, Yum Boats, told me the K650's top speed under sail so far is 21 knots, but they think it'll go 25.